ESSAY HELP PLZ

[dan0038]

Hey. I have a SAC in two weeks and there is gonna be an essay on it. Sadly, my teacher is as clueless and useless as a brick wall (trust me, no one has any idea how she got into teaching english language). And whats more sad is that shes setting completely pointless tasks that have nothing on how to structure or write an essay. She is setting an essay in exam conditions next week on a random topic and no one has had any practice (teacher did same thing last time for an a/c and then went over how to write one after everyone got rekt). Please, I need some help on how people first learnt how to write an english language essay, the approach to it and where to incorporate media examples/quotes (and where to find some for 2017). Much appreciated if people can reply with as much info as possible

[EulerFan102]

Hey there!

The standard structure for an EngLang essay is an introduction, 3 body paragraphs and a conclusion. The classic TEEL method is a great way to structure your body paragraphs (and is where you should use your examples and quotes). A good starting point may be to look back over some past essays from old VCAA examiner's reports and see how they were constructed.

Everyone approaches essays differently, but I like to target a few topics in particular (e.g. identity, Australian English, taboo) and memorise as many recent examples and quotes about these topics. Finding complexity and conflict within a topic is a great way to add depth to your analysis.

And a great place to start finding recent examples would be this board (https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=169255.0). Finding further examples is super easy to do on Google News, just searching key words for your relevant topic should bring up some usable examples.

Hope this answers some of your questions
Best of luck!